Anna Julia Cooper, From A Voice from the South: By A Black Woman of the South (1892).
Anna Cooper was born a child of a slave in Raleigh, North Carolina. Unlike a vest majority of African Americas, yet alone woman, she attended St. Augumne Normal School and Collegiate Institute and married a teacher named George C. Cooper. Anna Cooper later became an educator then a principle. She was the first African American woman to receive a Ph.D. at the age of 65. She was a dominant Voice for the African American women and wrote many speeches and essays which were collected in "A Voice from the South: By A Black Woman of the South.
Cooper was a strong advocate for women's right and for the unseen power they had during era. Throughout his essay she mentioned several women. Every woman in her eyes played a role in shaping the future of all women. These women put forth effort to protect, serve, be loving, compassion and contempment in very different areas of their societies. To many, the small efforts they were making may seem minimal but in Anna Cooper's mind they were just the begin of how the world was going to open up to women. Cooper also has a section written directly about African American women. In this quote "That Great Social and Economic Questions a wait her interference, that she could throw any light on problems of national import, that her intermeddling could improve the management of school systems, or elevate the tone of public intuitions, or humanize and sanctify the far reaching influence of prisons and reformatories and improve the treatment of lunatics and imbeciles; Cooper emphasizes the strengths of a African American woman. African American women of that time may not have been aware of the magnitude of their presence. .
Cooper continues on to how important of role a woman in politics. They also were common with the saying "behind every great man is a great woman," Cooper expressed that exact feeling.